A game that was almost guaranteed to be highly competitive quickly changed to a night of disappointment. The last home game of the season against California turned into a long, painful defeat for the Sun Devils.
On Saturday night, ASU took the lead into the fourth quarter, but was unable to hold on to the victory. Perhaps, it had something to do with the inability of the Sun Devils rushers to hold onto the ball as well in a match up where the lack of the running game proved costly for ASU.
"We're not a good running team. We aren't magically going to turn into one tomorrow," ASU coach Dirk Koetter said.
The potential of the ASU rushing attack quickly diminished, as red-shirt freshman tailback Cornell Canidate was helped off the field after suffering a high-ankle sprain. He was unable to return for the rest of the game.
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Canidate was eighth in the Pac-10 in rushing yards before he was hurt. His injury resulted in a loss of an average 49.3 rushing yards per game, the most for the Sun Devils, and in return, affected the outcome of Saturday's game.
At the end of the first quarter, Canidate was the only player to have rushed, besides sophomore quarterback Andrew Walter, unfortunately for a total gain of no yards. Walter was -24 yards for the night already, due to three sacks within the quarter.
At halftime, ASU was still in the negative for rushing yards with negative eight yards.
"I thought we had a decent running game. We broke for some big plays," Walter said. "I think the nature of the game said that we had to take what they were giving us and they were playing a lot of man."
However, the numbers put up speak loudly. ASU was unable to covert any fourth down chances and only four of fifteen third-down conversions. ASU also fumbled the ball four times throughout the game, one time by redshirt freshman tailback Hakim Hill, twice by Walter and once following reception by sophomore wide receiver Daryl Lightfoot. In addition, only two of their first downs came by rushing.
At the end of the almost four hour game, ASU was down 17 points. Only one rushing touchdown was scored, a run of two yards in the third quarter by Hill. Their rushing stats were sparse for a total of negative two yards. On average, the Sun Devils amass 103.8 rushing yards per game. In their 27 attempts against Cal Saturday, the Sun Devils gained 54 yards while losing 56 yards. An even sadder number when compared to Cal's 168 yards. ASU made up for the rest with their passing game.
"I think it was more that the game dictated it for us to try to get something going with the pass," Walter said.
Most of the scoring by the Sun Devils came from long passes thrown by Walter, who accumulated 477 total passing yards on the night, or senior kicker Mike Barth's field goals.
"We just didn't do the things necessary to win a football game. We had some spectacular individual performances mixed in, but we made way, way too many errors in all phases of the game to win against a quality opponent in the Pac-10," Koetter said.
Reach the reporter at katie.crane@asu.edu.
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